Tag: holiday

For today’s post, I’ve reached way back to my earliest microstock and put up my first cartoon Christmas tree. Christmas is an enormously popular microstock category that sells surprisingly well year round. This 2D Christmas tree was designed to be a multi-version character, which means I have a variety of similar trees with different moods available for sale. These typically include, happy, grumpy and angry. The design of the tree remains the same, but the position of the arms and expression change from one version to the next. This use of the multi-version character can be a great time saver when designing. Happy Christmas!

‘Tis the season for Cartoon Santa Claus. The lights are up, decorating has begun, and with that, there’s a need for Santa Claus cartoons. I haven’t drawn many people characters for sale as microstock but Santa Claus seemed like a must do for the holiday season. Recreating a character that is already so well known presents unique challenges. On the one hand, Santa Claus is a guaranteed sale at least once a year. On the other hand, everyone knows that so the market is already saturated with high-quality Santa Claus microstock. The challenge is to create a Santa that hasn’t been seen before. It can be something simple that sets him apart. This Santa Claus is sporting suspenders, not a typical look for Santa but one that I think suits him well.

Cartoon reindeer are by far my best selling holiday-themed microstock characters. My take on the reindeer has always been more comical than anatomically correct. Their long limbs and antlers leave the door wide open for comic silliness. This guy is decked out for the holidays and seems pretty excited to spread his brand of holiday cheer.

Halloween is on the horizon and jack-o’-lanterns are once again on the drawing board. These orange beasties make great canvases for facial expressions, ranging from naive innocence to bloody horrific. I tend to favor the latter, with a bit of knife-in-cheek horror thrown in.

There is a growing gallery of jack-o’-lanterns and other Halloween themed characters available for purchase at cartoon pumpkins.